


Opals and Rags

by voleuse



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-02
Updated: 2008-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>And there's a turbulent moon-ridden girl or old woman, or both</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opals and Rags

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before Episode IV. Title and summary adapted from Denise Levertov's _In Mind_.

_**LUKE:** Leia...do you remember your mother? Your real mother?  
**LEIA:** Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.   
**LUKE:** What do you remember?  
**LEIA:** Just images, really. Feelings.  
**LUKE:** Tell me.  
**LEIA:** She was very beautiful. Kind, but sad._

Leia's earliest memory was one of indefinable sorrow, of concealed dread and dawning disappointment.

Her next memory fell years later, as far as she could assess, Bail Organa's smiling face as he placed some trinket in her hand. This was the story she told to people, if ever the subject came up. But lying beneath it, like a discordant melody, was that sense of loss. She had no images to accompany it, no voices or textures, but she knew it was a whisper of her mother's mind, just before she died.

Leia never told Bail and Breha of this, but the first time she found an image of Padmé, as Queen Amidala, a wave of understanding swept into Leia's mind. She looked into the holographic face, watched it for half an hour, memorizing the curve of her cheek and the turn of her mouth. When Winter found her, Leia was mimicking the hologram's stance, her wrist arched in echoing grace.

In the shadow of the Empire, however, there wasn't time to dwell on the past. Leia gathered fragments of her mother, much of it accidentally, as she studied the Emperor's past and home planet. They spent endless hours debating how the feuding natives of Naboo might have influenced Palpatine's strategies, how the stratification of its politics had taught him to hide daggers from view.

And always, always, there was Amidala, her slim form at the center of the Galactic Senate, calling for the removal of Chancellor Valorum, little knowing who would follow in his place. Leia watched the vid until it flickered, then she put it away, never watched it again.

Breha had only met Amidala once, at a rare treaty negotiation. She described her as dignified, with a sweet smile kept hidden. Leia didn't ask what she had said, or how she voted. She had heard a dozen stories like it, and she couldn't help but calculate the innumerable possibilities, and the irreparable mistakes.

Leia never blamed her, and never judged. She only wished she could know her mother outside of history.

And sometimes, when she fell asleep, the sadness came to her again. Leia walked circles round in her dreams, but never heard her mother's voice.


End file.
